Crawling through the streets . . .

I always love getting together with the PDX Knit Bloggers and other knitsibs; thanks to chance meetings at a YarnHarlot book signing, we've created a lively, active fiber community in Portland. Now, thanks to Ravelry, our community is much larger and more diverse. It was through a Ravelry forum that I discovered that a whole whack of Seattle knitters were planning on S.E.X. (Stash Enhancement Xcursion) in Portland. And the PDX Knit Bloggers, not being your usual shy-type of knitters, jumped at the chance to meet other knitters and take part in a yarn shop crawl. So last Saturday, despite the unusually cold, wet (OK, so "wet" isn't really all that unusual here) weather, a small group of PDX Knit Bloggers were seen hanging out at Union Station.



Even this small group started attracting attention. OK, so it was mostly from some children who wondered what we were doing. But hey, we even found one little guy who was using some brilliant blue Lion Brand Homespun on a knitting loom! His big brother was appropriately mortified by the younger one knitting in public. We, of course, made sure the little guy got big kudos and encouraged him by telling him that we know a guy who has is an amazing knitter and even designs sweaters.



I'm really sorry this didn't come out better. Would you just look at that bag of Kerin's? She said she designed this on the day she had an argument with the IRS. Nothing fixes a bad mood quite like Hello Kitty. In hot pink, of course!

Pretty soon, the Seattle group showed up. There were more than we expected!



That's Charisa on the left, in the hat, trying to corral this bunch. But they were movin' fast; these gals had shopping to do!



Try as she might, Charisa just couldn't get these gals rounded up. It was an impossible task. Like herding cats. Or nailing jello to a tree.

In the end, everyone broke up into smaller groups and headed for the Streetcar and the local shops. My first stop was Dublin Bay.



Bad blogger that I am, I forgot to take pictures until after the first wave had cleared out. This is Chrissy Gardiner taking advantage of the lull in the storm to knit a few rows. I hadn't been to Dublin Bay before, so I was as anxious to check it out as the Seattle group was.



It's really a great shop and they made us feel very welcome with a 20% discount if you were wearing your name tag. They had out coffee, tea, cookies, and scones on the coffee table, a movie on the television, and wonderful comfortable seating.

Want to see the souvenirs I bought there?



The ball of sock yarn was in the sale bin; I couldn't resist pink sock yarn with sparkles. I blame it on the influence of that Hello Kitty bag. And hedgehog buttons! Why did no one tell me about these? I met up with Duffy at Dublin Bay; since she was a late arrival, I hung out on the comfy couch with a cup of tea until she'd had a chance to scope out the shop.

From Dublin Bay, we caught the Streetcar and headed for Knit Knot Studio. As we were waiting for our ride, Melissa called to warn us that the small shop was a madhouse. Apparently several of the small groups wound up there at the same time and overran the place!

So, we just stayed on until we got to Knit Purl; birthplace and homeland of the PDX Knit Bloggers.



That's LYS-worker extraordinaire and intrepid knitter Terisa behind the counter; she's one of the first PDX Knit Bloggers, too.



While not quite overrun with knitters, there were certainly lots of free-range fiber addicts.



Some appeared to be in shock at the "wall of Koigu".

Knit Purl gave everyone a skein of their ShiBui sock yarn; I took the turquoise as it reminded me of the color of their logo.



I bought two skeins of Fleece Artist SeaWool in Ebony colorway. I had intended to make Jeanie for myself, but when I unpacked my goodies at home, ToolMan said, "God, that's really nice yarn! It'll make great socks! And I really like those colors." I didn't have the heart to tell him that they weren't for him. I don't really need another shawl and he was so enthusiastic, that I hate to disappoint him. But, I might go back and exchange one skein for another color. After all, knitting one pair of ebony socks is tedious enough, but TWO pair? No way!

By mid-afternoon, the Seattle gals seemed to be doing fine on their own, and the PDX Knit Bloggers were wearing thin. So we retired to Starbucks for warm drinks and some knitting time. Actually, this was the first time all day when we really got a chance to catch up together.



From left: Judy, Kathleen, Duffy, Melissa, and Angela. After we'd had a chance to catch our breath, we all headed our various directions home after a long day of crawling through the streets of Portland. But what a good time we had doing it!